Some highlights of this week have been:

P.E.

The children have been working hard learning how to dance the Gay Gordon!  We are learning our Scottish dancing with P3A.  Everyone is really enjoying this area of P.E.!   Miss Taylor has also been teaching the children how to play bench ball.

Literacy

We had another try at writing an imaginative story using a picture as the stimulus.  This week’s picture was of a boy on a flying carpet.  Some of the stories have been very interesting!

Numeracy

On Tuesday we had a visitor from the WLC Numeracy team in to observe us during a Time lesson.  Mr Valentine was extremely impressed with the children’s time telling skills.

On Thursday we had another ‘Mild, Spicy, Hot’ challenge!  The purpose of these are to encourage the children to chose for themselves an activity that takes them out of their comfort zone and really challenge themselves.  This week’s challenge was on fractions.  Mrs Bruce was in class to observe the children during this lesson.  I was most impressed with the choices the children made.

Three of our P2 children did fantastically well.  Each getting 100% correct in the Spicy challenge!  Anton, Cara and Lauren all received a Math Award as a result of this.

Well done and keep up the great work!!

Interdisciplinary Learning:  HWB/Social Studies/Literacy

We are continuing to learn all about  castle life.  This week’s focus area was Knights.  In topic groups the children were using their team work and research skills to find out as many facts as they could about Knights.  They have been preparing a poster that they will then present to the rest of the class.

** Our P3s and P3A have an assembly on Friday 27th March on our castle topic.  We would love to see you all there to share our learning with you! **

Red Nose Day

We had lots of fun today and have hopefully raised a lot of money for this fantastic cause!  Instead of our normal problem solving activities we spent the morning designing our own Red Noses!

Successes 

Class awards

Anton, Cara and Lauren all received a Math award for their fantastic understanding of fractions during our Mild, Spicy, Hot challenge!

Star of the Week

This will be announced on Monday.  Pic will be uploaded on Monday.

Skillionaire

Khizar received an award for being able to answer questions and explain how the castle models were built.  P3A are now working on their models, we are looking forward to seeing their masterpieces! 🙂

Emma received her award for being able to make links between her knowledge of fractions and quarter past/to in time and explain this to Mr Valentine from the numeracy team.

Next week’s skill is ‘Apply‘.  Good luck to everyone!

Head Teacher Award

Kirstin received her HT award for fantastic effort in her Artistic Ace homework.  Well done Kirstin!

WHOLE CLASS GOLD STAR AWARD!!

We received our first whole class Gold Star award from Ms Macrae.  We received this for the superb writing we produced during last week’s GLOW Digital Story Writing activity.  We certainly did West Lothian proud!

We also received this award as a result of the huge effort put in for our latest homework challenge to design and make a medieval weapon!  Thank you for your continued support from home.

 

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Preston xx

 

This was primary 3 dressed in red for British Heart Foundation.

This is the 3rd time I have added to Blog, let’s hope it works this time!

We have had a very special week in P3/2 this week.

IDL

On Wednesday we went to Edinburgh Castle with our friends from Miss Adam’s P3 class.  The children had a fantastic time and all behaved impeccably.  I was extremely proud when a lady came up and commented on how well behaved, engaged and sweet the children were.  Well done P3/2, you are a credit to yourselves and Murrayfield PS.

Some of our favourite parts of the day were looking at all the weapons on display in the Great Hall, the Prison of War and the looking at the canons and imagining we were firing at the enemy! 🙂  I believe the children got a lot out of the trip as it let them see in a real context what we have been learning in class.

 

 

Hammocks in the Prison of War                    Being locked in a cell!                            Lauren trying out one of the beds

“Miss Preston, let us out!!!”

 

Digital Story Writing

Today we were extremely privileged to be chosen as the one and only class to represent all of West Lothian primary schools in a Digital Story Writing activity that has been running all week via GLOW.  Each day one class from a different region across Scotland has written a part of the story.  Today it was our turn to write the penultimate part.  The children came up with some fantastic ideas and myself, Ms Macrae and Mrs Bruce were blown away by the adjectives, adverbs and general vocabulary provided!!

A HUGE well done to each and everyone of the class!!

The story can be found by following this link.  We wrote chapters 18 and 19.

https://glowscotland.sharepoint.com/sites/learners/storytelling1/SitePages/Home.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0​

      

Planning our part                                                Posing after completing our part

RME

The class have been working with Ms Miller over the past few weeks on Chinese New Year.  They have created some super art work which we have on display within our class. This week the children were making ‘Hong Boa’ little red money envelopes.  Pics will be uploaded on Monday.

Art

We have been using our topics of Scotland/Burns and Castles as the basis for our art work this term.  Here are some pictures of our class – I am sure you will agree it is looking fantastic!

             

Our Castle Classroom                                                                        Some of our tartan and castles

              

                        

Reading & Grammar

We are trying out a new system for reading and grammar lessons.  We had our first ‘carousel’ of activities on Thursday and we were very lucky to have Ms Macrae pop in to see us all hard at work.  The aim of the carousel is to let the children take part in a variety of activities while learning grammar rules.  I will keep you up to date as to how this goes.

Successes

Our class won the Fair Trade contest with an amazing 121 Fair Trade wrappers/stickers collected over the two weeks.

We won lots of Fair Trade goodies 🙂

Skillionaire

Danny for remembering facts about jobs in a castle & Leona for remembering her spelling sounds and patterns.

Star of the Week

Our star of the week this week is Nivyn.  She won her award as an Effective Contributor.

I am sure you will agree that this has been an extraordinary busy and varied week!  I hope everyone has a lovely weekend and enjoys a well earned rest!

Miss Preston x

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MAKE YOUR FACE FUNNY FOR MONEY

We will be raising funds for Comic Relief 2015

Make your face funny on Friday 13th March and donate £1.

Non-uniform day too!!!!

Help us raise lots of money for a fabulous cause.

This is when we dressed in red and raised money for the British Heart Foundation.

We went to EDINBURGH CASTLE on Wednesday. We enjoyed being in the prison cells! We looked at the cannons but we just missed the one o’clock gun because we were eating our lunch…oops!  We saw the arrow slits and the portcullis and lots and lots of other things. Photos to follow.

 

One group were learning compound words in Early Intervention. Some other groups were learning the oa sound, and some were learning words with a double ll.

During Early Intervention Ms Macrae came to check to see how well we were all working and asked us some questions.

On Monday we were learning how to dance the Gay Gordon. It was tricky for us.

In PE with Mr Benyon we were doing running games.

In Maths, the Circles were learning how to tell minutes to and minutes past.

The Triangles were reading digital times and matching to analouge times and the squares were writing the time to match their paper clocks.

We are still collecting the FAIRTRADE wrappers. We find out today who the winning class is……..

 

 

 

Thank you those of you who came to support us in our Fairtrade Assembly.

I think you will agree that we did a great job!

There is still time to buy a raffle ticket for your chance to win a load of Fairtrade goodies.

 

We had great fun learning new moves with Andy from Jammin’ Fitness. We did it with the Primary 3/2 class.

 

This is us looking fabulous dressed in red for the Healthy Heart focus the previous week.

We have had another jam packed week in P3/2.

PE

We had a visit from Andy for a Jammin’ Fitness session on Monday … We all had a fantastic time learning a variety of new dance routines!

                               

HWB (Interdisciplinary Learning)

Our Health and Well-being focus for this term is teamwork.   We have been developing and self-evaluating our team-work skills through a variety of activities and areas of the curriculum this week.

Castle models: In our topic groups we have been applying our knowledge of the features of a castle to design, plan and build a model castle. The results have been fantastic!

 

Problem Solving: We had a ‘problem solving carousel’ afternoon on Wednesday. Each station required us to use a different problem solving skill. As each station required a different skill it was not what the children were used to! I was extremely impressed with the honesty and true self-reflection shown by each and everyone of them. As a class we have decided that this is an area of teamwork we need to develop and we will definitely do again.

 

Busy busy bees 🙂

Numeracy

Investigating a variety of strategies for our number work is an area we are going to be focusing on. We are doing this through our mental maths and numeracy problem solving lessons.

 

We are continuing to work on Time and Fractions.  All the children are working extremely well on both these subject area.  Telling the time and fractions, particularly when you move on from fraction of a shape to fraction of a number can be exceptionally difficult concepts to grasp.

 

Literacy

As ‘imaginative writing’ is the whole-school focus for this term, in P3/2 we used a ‘Spooky Castle’ picture as a stimulus for our writing this week. This was only the second time we had used a picture as a stimulus for writing and already it is clear to see a development in the children’s imaginative writing.

Successes

Head teacher awards

I am extremely proud to say that we have 4 head teacher awards from P3/2 this week!

Zander was given his award for his fantastic effort in the Medieval weapon homework challenge!

Sasha, Cara and Anton all received their awards for their consistently high level of effort in their Reading Journal homework

Skillionaire

Cara and Anna were our class winners this week for the Skillionaire challenge of ‘Analysing’.

Well done girls!!

This week’s Skillionaire challenge is Remebering.   Good luck everyone.

Star of the Week

This week’s Star of the Week is Zander!

Zander has been working extremely hard on improving his spelling, he is showing some fantastic imaginative writing skills and handed in his amazing homework challenge weapon just ONE day after the challenge was set!

Well done Zander! Keep up the good work!

NEXT WEEK

We have an extremely busy week ahead of us next week!!

On Wednesday we have our class trip to Edinburgh Castle (apologies once again for the mix-up with the consent forms. However, it did prove to be a perfect example/lesson on the risks of making mistakes if you try to do too much and rush your work!).

On Friday we have something extremely important to do! …. WATCH THIS SPACE!!

Our class has been chosen to not only represent Murrayfield PS but the whole of West Lothian in an exciting writing activity via GLOW. Full details to follow!

We would like to wish Morgan all the very best in her new school! Good luck Morgan!

Miss Preston x